This invention relates generally to horizontal conveyors and more particularly to conveyor units and a system of conveyor units for separating, aligning and moving a plurality of articles along one or more paths. One of the conveyor units particularly includes the combination of a vibrating conveyor, having a longitudinally extending trough, and a moving belt flight located in a depressed area, in the bottom of the trough, that extends in a direction longitudinally of the trough.
The conveyor system of the present invention has particularly been designed to receive a random bunch of pieces of wood (finger joint blanks) at the in-feed end of the system, separate that random bunch into the individual pieces of that bunch as they move forwardly and dispense the wood pieces, at suitable spacings, onto the moving belt of an in-feed conveyor of a finger jointer or other wood processing system.
The term xe2x80x98singulatexe2x80x99 will be used herein to describe separating the random bunch into the individual pieces that makes up that random bunch.
It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the conveyor units and/or conveyor system will have use in other fields and applications.
Short pieces of wood, referred to as blocks of wood, finger joint blanks, planer ends, trim blocks or trim ends, are commonly converted into useful pieces of lumber by a finger jointer. The short wood pieces, or lower value pieces, maybe of any size but the system herein has been designed for wood pieces having a common physical characteristic, namely the thickness dimension, and will be so described herein. The blocks of wood, for example in the present processing system maybe 2xe2x80x3xc3x973xe2x80x3, 2xe2x80x3xc3x974xe2x80x3 or 2xe2x80x3xc3x976xe2x80x3 and in lengths in the range of 10xe2x80x3 to 36xe2x80x3. These blocks, prior to the present invention, were manually singulated resulting in a variable rate of feed and a sustained upper limit of about 120 pieces per minute. Finger jointers however can process blocks fed at a much faster rate, for example 200 pieces per minute or more.
A principal object of the present invention is to provide a conveyor that singulates a random bunch of articles.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a system of conveyor units that includes a conveyor unit of the foregoing to feed articles, for example wood blocks, at a uniform rate to a downstream processing apparatus or system.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a conveyor unit that is a combination vibrating and moving belt conveyor.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a conveyor system for a waste wood recovery system.
A still further object of the invention is to provide improved article alignment channels in a conveyor or conveying system.
In keeping with the foregoing there is provided in accordance with one aspect of the present invention a conveyor unit to separate and guide articles as they are moved forwardly by said conveyor comprising a support frame, a longitudinally extending trough resiliently mounted on said frame, vibration inducing means connected to said trough and operable to vibrate said trough and thereby cause articles thereon to move forwardly, a depression, in the bottom of said trough, that extends in a direction longitudinally there along and an endless moving belt conveyor having an upper flight portion thereof located in said depression.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention there is provided a conveyor system comprising a conveyor unit that includes a longitudinally extending trough having at least one depression in the bottom thereof with each depression providing an upwardly facing channel extending in a direction lengthwise of said trough, vibration inducing means connected to said trough and operative to vibrate the trough and thereby move articles in the trough in a forward direction, an endless moving belt conveyor having an upper flight of the belt located in said channel to move articles resting thereon in said forward direction, said channel providing means aligning the articles in single file one after the other as they move, an in-feed means upstream of said conveyor unit for feeding articles to said conveyor unit, and guide means downstream of said conveyor unit maintaining alignment of said articles as they move forwardly.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention there is provided a conveyor with an improved article alignment section comprising parallel channels defining article flow paths and having walls sloping upwardly away from each of the respective channels associated therewith.